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Happy belated birthday to me!!!!
had a really good birthday, thanks for all the messages and txts. Got a lovely cake, with candles, however not quite enough, that'l be cause i'm getting old :( Went out for dinner too that night, just to a small eatery near the meat market at our school. My flat mates also bought we a bottle of wine, and a Doraemon keychain. My kids at the boarding school call me Doraemon - which is a Japanese cartoon caracter with a big front pocket - as I always have a bag in class that is full to the brim of stuff. If the kids aren't calling me that though they are calling me Kara, Kala or combinations very similar. Karen, it would appear is to difficult for my 6 year olds.
Was working my birthday, and also the day after so jsut a few drinks in the market then of to bed. Been teaching halloween to my kids, and at the boarding school we have been making collages out of the pictures they have been drawing, they are actually really good, obviously some more than others :p
Apart from teaching didn't really do much during the week. Been feeling really down - at points I really thought about going home, not because i'm not enjoying it though, just really missing my friends and family and I suppose contact with people who really get me. The people here are really nice, but they aren't the sort of people I would normally be friends with. However they have been a great help in getting me through the week, by not leting me dwell, and talking about their home sickness and all of us remembering why we came here.
The thing that is obvious though is that if I were to leave, I would kick myself, would be so annoyed for not finishing, and more importantly that once home, I know that I would wanna be back in China. Shame I can't have it both ways.
Soren's friend from Denmark has come over to visit - she was meant to arrive on monday. For all those reading this who are concidering coming to China, just remember one thing . . . your visa!!! She arrived on Thursday after a longer stay than anticipated in amsterdam airport. She came out for dinner with us on Friday, and we all headed back to the market for some beers and card games. I did have a good time, however at the beginning it did feel like I was forcing myself to be there. To not dwell is easier when you are kept busy.
Which is also the reason why I went with Anna and Matt to Yuelu Mountain on Saturday, even though I had already been. To make it different though, we started at Yuelu Academy, Soren and I on our last trip there were to tired to go in. This time I made it though. Really nice inside, I had thought before going though that it was where Mao had studied, but it turns out that is a different college somewhere in Changsha. This academy though was for many famous philosophers, none of which I can name, and none of which I had really heard of either. Oh well, the place was nice and had a confucius temple inside it. We got in for students to :) which made it even cheaper and totally worth the £1.50.
Afterwards we headed up the mountain. No lazy westerners approach this time, straight up the thousands of stairs. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not, there really where way to many. Half way up we stopped at a Buddhist temple, the oldest and most sacred one in the Hunnan region. Was beautiful and so peaceful, up here you forget that you are still in a city, a city that has nearly the same population as the whole of Scotland. We stopped of at a few tombs on the rest of the way up, nothing really worth writting home about though. After Matt massaging the cramp out of his leg, we started to go down the slope towards the bottom. We had concidered taking the chair lift down, but instead we took a slide/bobsledge sort of contraption down. Was really fun, and you can control the speed of it to.
The family infront of us were really slow though, and it didn't take long for Matt and I to catch up with them. So half way down, we put the brakes on and waited for Anna, photo moments, then tried to go as fast as we could down the rest of the mountain. They can pick up quite a speed, especially going round the corners.
Met up with Soren and his friend for dinner, then back to the flat and of to bed, really tiring day. Today, like most sundays I am gonna do my lesson plans and have a rather lazy ass day.
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